Tuesday, June 26, 2012

A few years ago I responded to a news article in which the author stated that Joseph was a polygamist. My response generated other responses, one of which indicated Joseph was a fraud and wrote the Book of Mormon himself, which was an easy task to do. In my response I challenged him to write another book just like it—since it was so easy to do. He never replied and I have not seen a book published by him to date. When I discussed this event with a friend, he candidly quipped, "If Joseph wrote the Book of Mormon himself, he must have been a pretty smart fella." After studying the Book of Mormon for over 48 years, I could not agree more with my friend's off-the-cuff observation. With all of its plots, sub-plots, interwoven story lines, and Christian doctrines aligning with the Bible but contrary to the teachings of the day, the book is brilliant. If it was not of divine origin and did not come forth just as Joseph testified, then Joseph, with less than a forth grade education, was the most brilliant author the world has ever known.

Price Publishing Company publishes a tract entitled, "Could You Write the Book of Mormon?" While many of you may have read this or something similar to it, since this blog is about defending Joseph, I thought it would be good to reproduce here the contents of that tract. It lists 33 criteria necessary to write a book like the Book of Mormon under similar conditions as did Joseph. Its intent is to show how impossible it was for Joseph to write the Book of Mormon himself, thus confirming its divinity. The points it makes are probably not all inclusive. So, if you can come up with additional points of your own to show that Joseph could not have written the Book of Mormon himself, please share them with us in your comments.

Before I begin reciting the points of the tract, I need to say a few things about it. According to this Price Publishing Company publication, "the author of this article is unknown. The article was circulated in the
Independence area in 1948. Dates and numbers relating to how many years have
passed since the Book of Mormon was printed, have been changed to correspond
with the year 2008." In addition, the references to the number of chapters, the length of the book, the number of words per page, etc. correspond to the RLDS 1908 version of the Book of Mormon. These references are different in other Book of Mormons such as those published by the LDS and the Church of Christ (Temple Lot).

Now to the points of the tract. Review the list below to see if you could write a book similar to the Book of Mormon under conditions comparable to those experienced by Joseph.

You must be between twenty-three and twenty-four years of age.

You cannot be a college graduate. In fact, you can have only three years
of formal schooling.

Whatever you write must be on the basis of what you know and not what
you learn through research.

You must write a history of an ancient country, such as Tibet, covering
a period from 2200 B.C. to 421 A.D.

You must write a book with 102 chapters, twenty-five of them about wars,
ten about history, twenty-one about prophecy, thirty-two about doctrines, five
about missionaries, and nine about the mission of Christ.

You must include in your writings the history of two distinct and
separate nations, along with histories of different contemporary nations or
groups of people.

Your writings must describe the religious, economic, social, and
political cultures and institutions of these two nations.

You must weave into your history the religion of Jesus Christ and the
pattern for Christian living.

When you start to produce this record covering a period of over
twenty-six hundred years, you must finish in approximately eighty days.

When
you have finished, you must not make any changes in the text. The first edition
must stand forever (this does not include grammatical errors, etc).

After
pauses for sleep and food, if you are dictating to a stenographer, you must
never ask to have the last paragraph or last sentence read back to you. You
must start right where you stopped previously.

Your
history or record must be long, approximately 777 pages with over 500 words per
page.

You
must add 180 proper nouns to the English language (William Shakespeare added
thirty).

You
must announce that your "smooth narrative" is not fiction, but
true—yes, a sacred history.

In
fact, your narrative must fulfill the Bible prophecies; even in the exact
manner in which it shall come forth, to whom given, and its purpose and
accomplishments.

You
must publish it to every nation, kindred, tongue, and people, declaring it
to be the Word of God.

You
must include with the record itself this marvelous promise: "And when ye
shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the
eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true; and if ye
shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he
will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost."

Tens
of thousands must bear record to the world for the next 178 years that they
know the record to be true. Because they put the promise to the test, the truth
is manifested to them by the power of the Holy Ghost.

Thousands
of great men, intellectual giants, and scholars, must subscribe discipleship to
the record of its movement, even to the point of laying down their lives.

There
can be no flaw, whatever, in the entire book (except in grammar, or other
errors of man in transcribing, etc.).

Your
descriptions of the cultures in these civilizations, of which you will write
about, is not known when you publish your manuscript.

Yet,
you must not make any absurd, impossible, or contradictory statements.

Even
so, many of the facts, ideas, and statements given as true in your record must
be entirely inconsistent with, even the direct opposite of, the prevailing
belief of the world. Yet very little is even claimed to be known about these
civilizations and their thousands of years of history.

You
must invite the ablest scholars and experts to examine the text with care.
You must strive diligently to see that your book gets into the hands of all
those most eager to prove it a forgery and who are most competent to expose any
flaws in it.

After
178 years of extensive analysis, no claim or fact in the book is disproven, but
all are vindicated. Other theories and ideas as to its origin rise and fall,
leaving your claims as the only possible ones.

Thorough
investigation, scientific evidence, and archaeological discoveries for the next
178 years must verify your claims and prove even the minutest details of your
history to be perfectly true.

Internal
and external prophecies must be confirmed and fulfilled in the next 178 years.

Three
honest, accreditable witnesses must testify to the whole world that an angel
from heaven appeared to them and showed them the ancient records from which you
claim your record was translated.

You
must hear out of heaven the voice of the Redeemer declaring to you and those
three witnesses that your record is true, and that it is their responsibility
to bear testimony of it—and that they do.

Eight
other witnesses must testify to the world that they saw the ancient records in
broad daylight, and that they handled them and felt the engravings thereon.

The
first three and the second eight witnesses must bear their testimony, not for
profit or gain, but under great personal sacrifice and severe persecution, even
to their deaths.

You
must talk a friend into financing your book with the understanding that he or
you will never receive any monetary remuneration from it. This person must
mortgage his farm to have it printed. You must sell the book at cost or less.

Finally,
after suffering persecution and revilement for twenty-four years in the process
of producing and defending this book, you must give, willingly, your own life
for your testimony that the record is of God.

So, what do you think? Could you write the Book of Mormon? If you could not, how could Joseph do so with less than a fourth grade education? I know I could not do so and I have had 18 years of formal education. The thing I like about this list is that it gives an everyday perspective to writing such a book and helps me relate to just how difficult it would be to do this on my own without direction from God. This list confirms to me that the book is of divine origin and could not have come about in any other way than was described by Joseph.

After reading the list, I have a couple of additional observations about the Book of Mormon that confirm to me that Joseph did not write it himself. First, for all you readers out there that have higher than a third grade education, what is the direction you travel going away from Jerusalem along the eastern shore of the Red Sea? No fair peaking at a globe or using Google Earth. Time is ticking—what is your answer? Do you know it off the top of your head or do you give up? For those that do not know, the answer is found in 1 Nephi 5:15-16, 18 (RLDS) or 1 Nephi 16:12-14 (LDS). With less than a fourth grade education, how could Joseph have known this to be true when some of us with a much better education do not know it and the rest of us that did know it certainly did not know it in the fourth grade. While this is a small thing, to me it is further testimony that Joseph did not write the Book of Mormon in any other way than he claimed.

The second observation I have about the Book of Mormon is the use of first-person and third-person writing styles. As we know, Martin Harris lost the first 119 pages of Joseph's translation. According to Joseph, this translation was of Mormon's abridgement of the large plates of Nephi (a third-person narrative with quotes from first-person narrative). The Lord told Joseph not to re-translate it but to translate the small plates of Nephi instead (a first-person narrative only). The small plates of Nephi covered the same period of time as did the first 119 pages of Joseph's translation. If Joseph's account is true, then the first part of the published Book of Mormon should be strictly a first-person narrative and the remaining part should be mainly a third-person narrative with quotes from first-person narrative. And that is exactly what occurs in the published Book of Mormon.

By my calculations, the translation of the small plates of Nephi ends somewhere in the middle of the "Words of Mormon" chapter where Mormon's abridgement picks up regarding King Benjamin. The first part of the published Book of Mormon is written in first-person narrative by the original authors of the plates—Nephi, Jacob, Enos, etc. The second part of the published Book of Mormon from Mosiah to Mormon is Mormon's abridgement of the large plates of Nephi. As such, it is written in third-person narrative by Mormon with quotes from the original text in first-person narrative plus Mormon's own comments in first-person narrative. Thus, the first-person and third-person writing styles of the published Book of Mormon supports Joseph's account of the translation and is further testimony that the book is exactly what Joseph said it was.

So these are my two additions to this list. What are yours? If you have any, please add them through comments. I am anxious to hear what you have to say.

I am a lifelong member of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (RLDS) and have been a member of the priesthood since 1974. I am associated with the Restoration Branches Movement of this church.

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Blog Purpose

The purpose of this blog is to defend the character and honor of Joseph Smith, Jr. The vast majority of sites on the Internet proclaim he was a false prophet and an evil man. However, as I have studied the Book of Mormon, the RLDS Doctrine and Covenants, the Inspired Version of the Bible, and other confirmed writings of his, the Spirit of God has witnessed to me time and time again of the truth of them and that they were God given. Because "the Spirit of the Lord doth not dwell in unholy temples" (Book of Mormon, Helaman 2:59), Joseph could not have been evil and received these communications from God. Thus, I will post to this blog information and reasoning supporting his good character and the truthfulness of his calling as a prophet of God.